Alum hopes to bring minor league baseball to his
hometown

By Brian Fitzgerald

If all goes according to plan, a BU alumnus' field of
dreams will soon be a field of grass. Gabriel Donio (CAS'95)
is president of the Hammonton Blueberries, a minor league
baseball team that has yet to play a game, sign a player, or
have a ballpark to call home.

But this will change in the near future, says Donio,
because he received some good news on August 4: the board of
directors for the Northern League, the nation's largest
independent baseball league, voted to start a six-team
developmental division that would include southern New
Jersey's Blueberries. "I'm ecstatic," says Donio. "We've
pretty much done the impossible. We started with nothing and
wound up having a great shot at having a minor league team
in Hammonton."

Donio hopes to secure building permits and begin
construction on the 3,500-seat facility in his hometown this
fall -- and see his team play ball in the 2001 season.
Private financing for the $6 million baseball park, which
will be "a rough miniature of the Brooklyn Dodgers' Ebbets
Field," says Donio, was made possible by "a group of
businesspeople committed to the community," including owners
of a local paving company and Hammonton's Atlantic Blueberry
Company, which has the largest cultivated blueberry farm
(1,300 acres) in the world.

The Blueberries were incorporated in January 1997 and
within a month Donio had the team uniforms and stadium
design prepared for a press conference. That November the
Blueberries bought a 220-acre tract of land for $200,000.
But starting a minor league franchise is a precarious
enterprise, and the Berries are not yet an overnight success
story. Independent league teams have no major league
baseball parent teams and are lower in the baseball pecking
order than minor league AAA, AA, and A affiliates. The
nearest big-league team, the Philadelphia Phillies, already
has farm teams in Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and Reading. After
discussions with the independent Atlantic League last fall,
Donio considered purchasing and relocating an existing
franchise in the Northern League, but the two sides couldn't
agree to terms.

Gabriel Donio (CAS'95) (left) owner of the
Hammonton Blueberries baseball club, shows the
public plans of the team's new ballpark. With Donio
is ex-New York Yankees farmhand Scott Gully, who
diplays the Blueberries uniform. Donio holds a box
of blueberries, which his team may use for
promotions.

Meanwhile, Donio sold the idea of minor league
baseball to the Hammonton community, promising to bring a
team there without spending a single tax dollar. The
Blueberry Field property, a former training ground for
racehorses, was bought with profits from Hometown Heritage,
a real estate company Donio partially owns. "We purchased
land, marketed ourselves, and earned the backing of
government officials, business leaders, and the public," he
says.

"The Hammonton Blueberries have shown us that they are
committed to building a ballpark and fielding a team," says
Northern League East Division Executive Director Mike
McGuire. "They have strong community support."

Donio says that his experience at Boston University has
everything to do with his accomplishment so far. "I had a
great liberal arts education at BU," says Donio, who majored
in English, wrote a sports column for the Daily Free Press,
and worked in a souvenir store across from Fenway Park. "I
learned how to deal with people, which in business is the
most important skill you can have."

After graduating, he attended graduate school at
Georgetown University and worked on Capitol Hill for New
Jersey Republican Congressman Frank LoBiondo. As a
congressional aide he saw how North Wildwood, N.J., started
a minor league franchise by courting business leaders,
touting the team as an economic benefit to the town.

"In Hammonton, there isn't much to do at night," says
Donio. "We'll be providing affordable family entertainment.
In Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, the average ticket
costs $16 to $20, and a $10 ticket puts you up in the
nosebleed seats."

Plus, he adds, Hammonton is a relatively affluent town.
Although minor league baseball traditionally has a gritty,
blue-collar identity, Donio says that the upscale community
is likely to consistently fill the ballpark and spend money
on concessions and souvenirs. Many minor league
organizations tend to pull up stakes and move a lot, but
Donio says that independent leagues are slowly shaking their
fly-by-night stigma. At present, minor league baseball's
popularity is surging, and movies such as Bull Durham have
helped publicize the quaintness of the small ballpark
experience. Where else can a fan establish eye contact with
a player, say hi, and have the player return his greeting as
he's walking off the field?

"Our payroll will be $50,000 to $75,000 for a 25-man
roster," says Donio. Indeed, in these days of absurdly high
player salaries in the major leagues, along with their share
of whining prima donnas, much of minor league baseball's
appeal is its innocence. The Blueberries will wear throwback
uniforms, and the ushers will don 1950s outfits.

"We're elated at the prospect of having professional
baseball in Hammonton," says town councilman James Bertino.
"It creates jobs and will be a big opportunity to the
industrial park area. How many other towns would love to
have their own ballpark, and have it built without taxpayer
money? It's a win-win situation for the town of Hammonton."